Menu

Month: October 2014

Before the first episode, a short trailer for the Film Four Extra presentation Runners.

Then, an episode of Cheers. In Let Sleeping Drakes Lie Frasier tells Sam about a patient of his who is attracted to dancers, so Sam straps on the old jazz shoes. Ted Danson is, of course, a pretty good dancer, so much fun is had.

Before the second episode there’s a trailer for A Very British Coup. Then the episode is Airport V. Carla is afraid of flying, so can’t visit Eddie on tour with the ice show. So Frasier takes her along with a lot of his patients who share her phobia.

This episode was directed by Norm himself – George Wendt.

Before the next episode, another trailer for A Very British Coup.

In The Sam in the Gray Flannel Suit Sam is promoted to an executive position in the company so he can play in the company softball team.

Our Hourly Bread is the next episode, where a raffle for a cruise goes horribly wrong.

There’s a trailer for The Last Resort before the next episode.

The next episode is Slumber Party Massacred. Sam visits Carla’s home for a meal. It is not without incident.

Before the next episode there’s a trailer for Coppolla’s The Conversation, the prequel to Enemy of the State.

The last episode on this tape is Bar Wars, another in the occasional episodes where Cheers pits its ingenuity against their bitter rivals at Gary’s Olde Town Tavern.

After this episode, there’s a trailer for Brookside. There’s also a trailer for The Late Shift, presenting the Columbian Volcano Appeal Concert.

Then, for the last ten minutes of the tape, the start of an episode of The Last Resort. The first guest is boxer Nigel Benn.

The recording stops just as this interview finishes.

Adverts:

Mercury Communications

Motown Dance Party

Tissot

Anchor Spray Cream

Sybaris

Nat West

The Hits of House

Coke

London Underground

George Michael – Faith

Holsten Pils – Griff Rhys Jones – Some Like it Hot

Coke – First Love

BMW

Pimms

Heinz Beans with things n them

Our Price – The Style Council – Confessions of a Pop Group – featuring Hugh Laurie

Back to basics. More jurisprudence from our friends at McKenzie Brackman.

The tape starts with Mike Scott and a trailer for The Time The Place, talking about the proposed Section 28 which would seek to ‘ban the promotion of homosexuality by local government.’ Those were the days.

There’s a trailer for a subtitled Channel 4 film, He Dies with his Eyes Open starring Charlotte Rampling. While on Thames, there’s a late night horror film,The Torture Garden.

There’s a trailer for Hard Cases.

Then, an episode of LA Law.

This is the season premiere of season 2, The Lung Goodbye (#5K05).

The next episode guest stars the much-missed David Rappaport as a lawyer who goes up against Victor in a product liability case.

This is episode #5K01 – The Wizard of Odds.

Before the next episode, the end of This Week. Followed by a trailer for next week’s programme, about the new Ethiopian famine. There’s a trailer for Crescendo with Stephanie Powers. And a short trail for Shelley.

In the next episode there’s an unexpected cameo from TV’s Garry Shandling.

This episode also introduces Larry Drake as Benny Stulwicz.

This is episode #5K02 – Cannon of Ethics.

Following this episode, there’s a slight technical glitch, leading to an embarrassed apology. Then a trailer for Minder. And a trailer for Superbowl XXII.

Then, the start of News at Ten. The lead story is the rejection of the appeal of the Birmingham Six – who would eventually be released some time later.

Recording stops during the news.

As a special treat, here’s a compilation of all the trailers, ad breaks and the News – basically, everything on this tape that isn’t LA Law.

Adverts:

Car Fix It

Solpadeine

Alfred Marks – with “The most advanced office systems training in the country” – what are these “Data Bases” of which you speak?

Recording switches to some adverts, then a trailer for the “Golden Rose of Montreux winner” Strike!

Then, an episode of St Elsewhere. Bum In Shot! I mean Boom In Shot!

This episode was directed by cast member Eric Laneuville

After this episode, we switch to another recording, Craig Goes Mad in Melbourne. it opens with a coach tour of Melbourne hosted by Rod Quantock who seems to specialise in harrassing regular householders by showing his tourists around their houses without invitation.

Stand Up from Anthony Ackroyd.

New Zealand group The Front Lawn perform a very strange song that for some reason I remember quite well.

Rita Rudner performed at a press conference.

The press conference was apparently interrupted by a naked Bing Hitler (Craig Ferguson).

Richard Stubbs talks about the effects of alcohol.

After this programme, recording switches to the end of a news programme about Northern Ireland. The titles reveal it’s Panorama.

Maybe Baby – known in the US as For Keeps? Not the Ben Elton/Hugh Laurie

There’s a preview of forthcoming summer movies, including Rambo III and Crocodile Dundee II. And there’s an interview with Woody Allen about September. And Tom Brook looks at the summer movies in the US.

The tape starts with some LWT Weather, some ads, a super-hip trail for the new Night Network, and a trail for the Nicholas Lyndhurst sitcom The Two of Us.

This is the first series of The New Statesman, probably from the first broadcast., although I can’t be sure of that. The first episode is Happiness is a Warm Gun. Alan B’Stard is elected to Westminster with a huge majority, after the other two major candidates are seriously injured in a freak car accident. John Woodvine appears as a mad Chief Constable who drinks beer in the pub with the Holy Spirit.

Before the second episode there’s another trail for Night Network, and an extremely cheeky trailer for Never Say Never Again which used the regular Bond theme – though I would blame LWT for this.

Second Episode is Passport to Freedom, in which B’Stard’s wife inherits £1m in shares in a car company, and Alan plots to ruin the company so she won’t divorce him.

Sex Is Wrong is the third episode, with Alan using a ‘moral majority’ movement to publish a book called ‘Sex Is Wrong’ illustrated with pictures “frankly shocking in their sexual explicitness”.

Next episode is preceded by a trailer for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Waste Not Want Not has Alan having to find somewhere to dump tons of Argentinian nuclear waste.

In Friends of St James Alan tries to set up a bank on a caribbean island, and ends up pretending to hijack a plane.

Before the next episode, there’s the end of an episode of the Nigel Havers series The Charmer. Then a trailer for The Bretts.

Three Line Whipping sees Alan give an awful performance on TV-AM, and ends with him driving the supposedly dead body of a taxi driver to be disposed of in the country.

Following the last episode there’s the trailer for The Bretts again, then the start of The South Bank Show. “Tonight a group which for the past few years have spoken in its songs for much of the intelligent, unblinkered youth of this country, The Smiths.” Melvyn can hardly keep a smirk off his face on the word ‘intelligent’.

There’s some remarkable footage of a pre-Smiths Johnny Marr.

Naturally, John Peel chips in.

And Morrissey himself is interviewed.

Is “Voice and Lyrics” incredibly arch, or am I being unfair?

“The Smiths came together quite by accident really. It just suddenly happened. Which sounds… almost unbelievable, but it really did, it really did happen in a very sudden and very casual way.”

Well, since the only non-casual way a pop group would get together is if Simon Cowell creates you from the discarded parts of failed X-Factor entrants, it’s not really that unbelievable.

Johnny Marr says that Morrissey’s performance was an attempt to ‘Take back the gork.”

The programme also talks to fans. Jo O’Keefe liked his pale skin and rugged jawline…

And it’s not just the ladies. Here’s Shaun Duggan.

“I wouldn’t want to characterise the typical Smiths fan” says Jon Savage of the Observer, all the while typifying all of rock journalism himself.

Jo O’Keefe has no such qualms about characterising fans. “Male, late teens, lonely, dejected, failed in love, very nervous, no confidence whatsoever. A box bedroom rebel.”

Sadly, we only have 10 minutes of this programme before the tape stops.

Adverts:

Kaliber

The Guardian

Lloyds Bank – John Sessions, Leo McKern

Radio Rentals

Guinness

The Guardian

Renault 21

Wispa

Capital Radio

Heineken

Daily Express

Advertise on Central TV

The Untouchables

TWA Ambassador Class – they serve Ferrero Rocher.

Heinz Tomato Sauce

Apple – “Going To Work”

Compare this to the American version

The UK version is shorter, the close-up of the report is completely different – even the format and binding is different to the preceding shot, and the UK version ends with Apple as the brand, while the US version has Macintosh as the branding.

TWA

Whitbread Best Bitter – another one featuring Peter Capaldi

Renault 21

Castrol GTX

Intercity

Nescafe Blend 37

Daily Express Enterprize game – trumped up Bingo for stockbrokers

Volvo 340

ICI

Thomson Holidays

American Express – featuring Dominic Jephcott from The Beiderbecke Affair

This is the epitome of smug, rich people. “I adore Seville, but I couldn’t bear to leave Spain without spending a couple of days in Barcelona.”

We open this tape with a BBC1 presentation of Joe Dante’s extremely dark comedy, The ‘Burbs. It starts with the Universal logo, but then zooms down onto the globe until it finds the suburban street on which the whole movie plays.

A strange family moves in – and the bored neighbours start imagining all sorts of horrible things – not surprising, since they look like the Addams family.

The ‘Burbs is an odd film. It’s funny, but it’s also hard to root for the protagonists, even the usually affable Tom Hanks, because frankly they behave appallingly badly. But that’s the nature of the story, and it does all lead to a ludicrously calamitous finale.

The head of the weird family is played by the always reliable Henry Gibson, seen here with Bruce Dern.

Naturally, it’s a Joe Dante movie so here’s Dick Miller.

Plus, any movie that features Carrie Fisher has to be worth watching. Although it’s ages since I’ve watched Drop Dead Fred so that statement might not be entirely true.

After the movie, there’s a trailer for Dragnet, then recording switches – very glitchingly. It looks like a switch from SP to LP, but the glitching continues for about a minute into the programme.

The programme, by the way, is The Flash. Yes, because although it’s the hot new show from DC in the US, they did it all before in 1990 in a programme that was clearly channelling Tim Burton’s Batman in a big way.

It has a theme by Danny Elfman, and incidental music scored by Elfman’s longtime conductor Shirley Walker, who had Elfman’s signature style down pat. It was developed by Danny Billson and Paul De Meo, writers of Trancers and Zone Troopers.

This episode is called Child’s Play and features a pre-Seaquest Jonathan Brandis.

Following this episode there’s a longer trailer for Arachnophobia. There’s a very intense trailer for a weekday Australian soap, E Street.

Then, we get some WWF wrestling with WWF Superstars introduced by a very shouty Vince MacMahon, with Mr Perfect.

The recording stops after about 30 minutes of this.

Adverts (and trailers):

trailer: Arachnophobia

trailer: Unsolved Mysteries

Bounty

Peugeot 106

Kodak Gold

Shell Advanced Fuels

Cesar

Sky Sports

21 Jump Street

The Simpsons

Esso

Sodastream

Fresh Cream

Midland Bank

Mars & M&Ms – Danny Baker

Golden Crown

Trailer: Marciano

Trailer: WWF Superstars

Snickers Ice Cream

Lift Lemon Tea

Kingsmill

Batman Returns – in cinemas

Proton cars

Cesar

trailer: Arachnophobia

Setlers Tums

M&Ms – heavily into the Olympic theme

Sheba

Cornetto

trail: Studs

Ribena

Pedigree Chum

Batman Returns in cinemas

Midland Bank

Feel the Rhythm – album

trail: Moonlighting

trail: Marciano

trail: Simpsons

Peugeot

Oxy 10

Studioline

Ariel Colour – or rather “Ariel Color” as they misspelled it on the box, the idiots.

In the audience after his number, I spot Harry Enfield, Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson (with a woman I don’t recognise) in the audience.

The reason for their presence is made clear with the final guest, Adam Athanassiou, who was the real-life model for Harry Enfield’s Stavros character.

There’s another episode of The Last Resort following this.

First guest is John Byrne – not the comic artist, but the writer of Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin’ Heart.

There’s a variety act after this, Snake Woman, a very impressive contortionist.

After a short interview with her (in Russian, allegedly) the next guest is Hazel Jones. She makes baby clothes for grown men who like to dress up as babies.

After the break, there’s a piece of archive footage from a very long time ago, featuring Frankie Howerd.

There’s music from Micha Paris.

And the brilliant Gilbert Gottfried.

Following this episode there’s a trailer for Woody Allen’s Everything you Always Wanted To Know About Sex.

This recording stops shortly, and there’s another recording underneath. It’ a very strange ‘semi-documentary’ about the effect of the Vietnam war in Britain.

I spotted Henry Woolf in there, but can’t find anything in his iMDb listing, but now here’s Glenda Jackson addressing an anti-war rally.

At last we get an ad break, and find out this programme is entitled Tell Me Lies. Directed by Peter Brook. It’s got a 10 star review on iMDb. The small section I saw wouldn’t make me agree. Perhaps it was a weaker section.